


The Killing Kind

by Polyhexian



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Corpse Desecration, Empurata, Gen, POV Second Person, Pre-War, oc fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27073339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyhexian/pseuds/Polyhexian
Summary: I roam these hallsSearch the nightIn hopes that I may seeA remnant trace, a glimpse of youI stare into the deepSinging, "I know, I know, I know, I know, I knowI know my love can be-"The deep stares back, speaks to me"I know my love can beThe killing kind"
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	1. And a rabbit gives up somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> Toot toot I'm finally writing my oc fic lmfao. Figure while I'm being niche I might as well be REAL niche.
> 
> [Airshock's design](https://whirlibirb.tumblr.com/post/621847560497332224/some-separate-paintjobs-for-airshock-prewar)
> 
> [Hazard's design](https://whirlibirb.tumblr.com/post/621229980377071616/draikinator-this-is-hazard-they-turn-into-an)
> 
> [Transformers OC tag with more art and stuff!](https://whirlibirb.tumblr.com/tagged/tfoc)

"Oh man," snorts Groundpounder, "I know that face. Your application got rejected again."

You scowl at him as you clock in with your punch card and shove it back in your subspace. "Don't remind me."

"Don't you think it's time to give up?" he smirks, "They're never going to let a cold constructed piece of slag like you change jobs."

"You're cold constructed, too," you remind him.

"And they'd never let a piece of slag like me change jobs, either!" he laughs, wheezy through fractured vents. You roll your optics at him and turn away.

You check your job list for the day and sigh in frustration. You hate working construction. It's filthy and it's hard and it's menial, and everything you do is in obnoxious isolation. You don't even actually _build_ anything, which might at least feel _somewhat_ validating. All you do is pick things up from the ground and fly them up higher, pick things up from higher places and then fly them down to the ground. 

There's better jobs for helicopters, but not for cold constructed ones. You're hard-barred from the Aerial Corps, not that you particularly want to join the Cybertronian military anyway. What you _really_ want to do is medivac- but you know that only forged Cybes get to be a part of the medical system. You don't get to be a doctor, not even _medical transport_ if someone else built you. It isn't done.

You apply for a transfer to Medivac every three months anyway.

You were not a lucky mech. Some of your peers were fortunate enough to be constructed early in the spark splicing program, early enough their existence was considered more of a tolerable novelty than it was by the time you were built six months before Nova Prime left on the Ark and Nominus Prime took over control of Cybertron. By the time you were a decade, the planet was in full apartheid. 

Do you resent forged mecha? Obviously. But you're not so stupid as to let them know that; you read _After the Ark_ when it was still legal to own it. You know what happens to people who share such sentiments. You wait on pins and needles for the day you hear the author has had a suspicious and fatal accident.

"Airshock!" calls Landslide, hanging from the structural framework of the skyscraper your team has been working on for the last eight months, "I need another 18-beam up here!" 

"Just put it in my carry queue!" you call back, "I've gotta grab another crate of rebar for Takedown first!" 

"Oh, come on, it's _one_ beam! It'll take you two kliks!"

"We got a queue for a reason, 'Slide, I ain't gonna be responsible for a collision."

"Didn't I clock in for you last week?" Landslide reminds you, "Do me a favour!"

You grimace internally in your alt and glance over at your rebar delivery on the other side of the site, and then groan and turn to the other direction to grab him an 18-beam from the stockpile with your crane. The day is obscenely hot, the Cybertronian sun beating down and making your plating boil and your fans work overdrive, and tonight you're still going to be thinning your fuel before you top off.

Megatron was right, honestly. 

"Hey!" cries a voice you don't have time to recognize, "Airshock, get out of the way!" 

You barely have time to look up and see the beam bundle swinging toward you before it hits, and you don't see anything anymore.

* * *

You're fragged.

You push the door to your habblock open with your shoulder, limp inside and toss your arm on the table. You don't know what you're going to do. 

You were barely scraping by before. Now? Injured, armless, jobless- in need of repair? You're a dead mech walking. You can't work. You can't do anything. You're going to be a guttermech by the end of the week. Your life is over.

There's a knock at your door.

"I am so, so sorry," says Landslide. He looks like he's been crying. "This is all my fault."

"Technically," you sigh, leaning on the doorframe with your one good arm, "...But don't dwell on it. We all get fragged eventually. Could have been anyone's fault. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at hospital bills, and how they make 'em so I can't afford to get fixed." You spit the last part, bitter. "The system is designed for folk like us to die."

"I know," he says, "Which is why I'm here."

"I'm not taking your money," you say, "I still won't be able to afford the bill and then _you'll_ starve and no one wins. Forget about me."

"That's not it," he says, and lowers his voice to a whisper, "Airshock… I know a guy."

"A guy who does what?"

"A guy who… just trust me. Come with me." He looks nervous.

You eye him suspiciously, but the worst thing that can happen is you get siphoned and stripped for parts and you're just as likely to have that happen anyway. You grab your arm off the table and shut the door. "Okay."

He leads you through the back alleys of Kaon, between ramshackle mechanics and scrapyards and into the lower levels. The darkness blots out the world here and you rely on the dim glow of your headlights to guide you, but it seems like he knows the way through the city's labyrinthian substructure. 

Eventually he knocks in a pattern on an old gun-metal grey door, so rusted you aren't even sure it opens. 

"In Lower Petrohex I lost my spark," says a chipper voice from within.

"In Praxus gardens I fell apart," Landslide replies. There's a moment of silence and the door swings open, surprisingly easy. 

The mech that greets you should not be here. He's gleaming, spotless glossy orange-red and white plating, medic insignia crisp and red. He's got these weird kibble handles on his chest and you wonder what the hell his alt mode is but he smiles at you, optics wide and bright.

"Heya!" he beams, and shuts and locks the door behind the two of you, "Landslide, right? Great to see you again! Is that fuel pump holding up?"

"Sure is, doc," Landslide nods, "It's been awhile. This is one of my coworkers."

"I got hit today," you supply, "Arm's off, tertiary lines damaged, plating's a nightmare. Are you… from Iacon?" He looks like an AoSaT boy, at least, and he nods.

"Sure am. Forged for function'n all!" he leans back against the door coolly and offers you a hand to shake- conspicuously his left, probably since your right is in no condition for shaking. "I'm Hazard."

"I gotta get going," says Landslide, "but trust me, 'Shock, Hazard is safe. He's been out here patching up leakers and guttermechs for months. I hope we meet again."

You watch him leave and you're alone with the AoSaT graduate.

"Why?" you ask him, baffled.

He grins and wags a finger at you, then crosses the room to roll out a hidden medical slab from the wall. "So that's the thing, huh! Everybody asks that. Have you read _After the Ark?_ "

"Yeah," you answer, suspiciously. He's a forged medic. Why in the pit would he read After the Ark? Why would he _care?_

"I read it," he answers, covering the slab in what looks like parchment paper, "And I'd never seen what things were like out here before, but that book shook me. And then I heard about _Ratchet._ "

You wrack your brain. "The Autobot CMO?" You vaguely remember hearing his name on tv at some point.

"Yes!" Hazard exclaims, pointing at you with both hands, "The _Autobot CMO_ , and I find out he's running a _secret underground clinic_ out in Rodion. He's fixing the world from the bottom up, patching up people out here who don't have anyone else who cares about them, and I say, holy Adaptus, that's the most metal thing I've ever heard. That's a life that _matters._ " His optics glitter as he leans forward on the berth toward you. "If he can do it, _I_ can do it."

"You're insane," you say without thinking. You shouldn't have, but it's true.

He laughs and rolls his eyes. "Aha, maybe a little bit. I figure everyone has to be, but- at the end of the day you have to live with yourself, you know? And I sleep soundly knowing I _did_ something, I _tried._ "

"That's weird," you squint.

"Come on," Hazard pats the berth, "Up with you. I've got an arm to reattach."

"Seriously," you say, without moving, "I can't pay you."

"Good, don't," he smirks, "I work pro bono."

"You're going to get murdered, you know that, right?" you look around at the room, clearly set up as a back alley clinic, medical supplies in old tubes and cups, "The council literally has a hit out on people who do stuff like this. They want to make sure we all stay in our castes."

"I'm not afraid to die," he shakes his head, ever present smile refusing to leave his smug face, "Especially if it's for something."

You eye him suspiciously for another moment, before you step up and onto the medical berth and set your arm down beside you.

"So," he says, pulling on a welding mask, "What's your name, then?"

"Airshock," you say, and wonder why you gave him your real name.

"It's nice to meet you, Airshock," he says, and pulls the mask down, "I'm gonna save your life."


	2. But my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake

"Weapons off," you snap, crossing your arms over your chest.

"Are you serious?" the stranger grouses, "They're internally wired, I can't take them off."

"Then disable them," you insist, "Remove the barrel and leave it here." 

"Fine," he groans, and leans forward so that he can get his servos on the barrel of the turrets on his back and break them down. 

You don't take chances. You've not been Hazard's bodyguard for very long, but long enough to know that he plays fast and loose. He doesn't take his safety seriously at all, which is crazy, because people _absolutely_ will murder him for what he has or what he's doing. Hazard is, frankly, a hazard.

"Blindfold," you say, holding it out to him. He sighs and puts it on, and you flare the rotors on your back so he can hold one as you lead him out of the room and down into the sewer tunnel toward the new base you set up for him. Much safer. Much harder to find. You're meticulous in making sure no one knows where it is or how to get back there through the labyrinthian tunnels beneath Kaon, so even if they wanted to come back later to steal, they couldn't. You take your new job very seriously.

"I'm just finishing up," Hazard says without looking away from his work when you open the door and pull the next patient inside. You turn and pull his blindfold off and he looks around curiously, blinking his optics in the sudden light. He seems somewhat perturbed by the Cybe on the table, internals opened like a flower, Hazard elbow deep in them and stained pink with energon all over. 

"Clogged fuel line," you explain, and he looks over at you, "Don't worry. He's out cold, he can't feel anything."

"Oh," he says, "That's good."

"What's your name?" Hazard asks, "I'm Hazard."

"Stop telling people your name," you snap at him, but he ignores you, like always. 

"I'm Gearstorm," says Gearstorm, "Thank you for helping me."

"I haven't helped you yet," Hazard says, and grabs a minitorch from the table, "Airshock; preliminary diagnosis?"

"He took a punch to the gut that he thinks knocked something loose," you tell him, "It's making a clicking sound that got louder when I made him do jumping jacks. I think he broke a cooling fan."

"Sounds like," Hazard murmurs, and then seems legitimately distracted. You nod at Gearstorm.

"Come on, you can sit down over here. It won't be long."

"So," he says as he sits and you don't, "have you guys… been doing this long?"

"Long enough," you answer vaguely.

"Are you one of those, um," he stops, as if he has to remember the word, "Those Decepticons?"

"No," you say.

"Not yet," he says at the same time.

You frown at him and he ignores you, but that's typical.

"Oh," Gearstorm says again, "Just seems like a kind of Decepticon thing to do."

"Still neutral," you tell him, "Though _that's_ becoming more controversial every day, huh."

"Yeah," Gearstorm nods, "I've been thinking about joining the Decepticons, but…"

"But you don't want to get hunted down like a wild turbofox by the Senate's goons," you say dryly, "I don't blame you."

"I'm hoping maybe things will calm down, go back to normal," he admits.

"What, did you _like_ normal?" you scoff.

"I liked it more than _this_ ," he answers, "Tensions are so high. I'm terrified all the time."

You shrug noncomittally and Hazard shuts the mech on the table's chest plating and stretches his arms up high, then reengages his medical access connection to bring him back online.

He sits up, woozy, rubbing his head. "Is that it?" he asked, wobbling.

"You've been out for an hour," Hazard laughs.

"Really?" 

"Yeah, really. You're all done, though. Airshock will take you back out."

"Thank you," the patient says, his optics moist, "You saved my life. I don't know how I'll ever repay you."

"Go do something with it, yeah?" Hazard says, with his trademark smile, "Second chances and all that."

"I will," he says reverently, and you help him down and hand him the blindfold. You wait until Hazard has Gearstorm safely offline before you take the other one back out to the street and help him collect his weapons. You turn him loose and let yourself, for a moment, feel good. You've helped do something that mattered. 

You go back down into the tunnels and return to the clinic. Hazard gives you a little wave when you open the door.

"You were right," he grins, "Busted fan."

You beam, straightening up and fluttering your rotors proudly. "Learned from the best."

"Don't be so humble, I've barely taught you anything," he scoffs, twisting a screwdriver, "You pick it up on your own. On that note, I managed to score another textbook for you."

"Ooh!" you clap your servos together, "You did?"

"It's in the drawer by the suspension bath," he says, gesturing with the screwdriver, "Surgical."

You feel giddy, like a sparkling as you open the drawer to find your prize. Your main job is as a bodyguard, but Hazard has been teaching you about medicine, little by little. It's very motivating.

"Also," he says, "I read this essay the other day by a blacksmith in training that I thought was _really_ interesting."

"Oh yeah?" you say, flipping through pages on the datapad as you sit down by the wall, "What's it called?"

" _Cybertron and the Persistence of Culture Creep: What Gender Identity Means for Mechanoid Races._ "

"Huh," you say, "That's an obscure one. Can you send it to me?"

"Sure can!" he titters happily, "I suspect it will be banned soon. It mentions waaay too much alien stuff, too much about pre-Golden Era Cybertron, stuff like that. A really great read, but boy, the bigwigs are gonna hate it."

"You know I love anything the bigwigs hate," you chuckle.

He looks up and gives you a lopsided smile. "I know, 'Shock."


	3. as if the choice were mine to make

"Hush!" you giggle, "Someone's going to hear you!" 

"Oh, you're paranoid!" Hazard snorts, kicking his legs over the side of the scaffolding the two of you are seated on, stories above Kaon, "No one is going to hear us!"

 _"You_ aren't nearly paranoid enough," you laugh, elbowing him in the side, "The walls can hear you, you know."

"Poetic, but untrue. There's no such thing as a wall alt-mode. That's just a myth."

"Hush, you!" You lean back and take another swig of engex, regarding the twinkling city beneath the dark sky overhead. "Cybertron is beautiful like this. It's a shame some people never get to see it."

Hazard nods, swishing his own bottle thoughtfully. "I've never seen it like this before."

"Never?" you inquire, tilting you visor toward him and casting a cerulean glow onto his armor, "Not even from the windows of AoSat?"

"Well, I'm only there during the day," he admits, "I've never seen it from this high at night, I mean."

"It is really different," you agree, "And you've made it better."

Hazard chuckles, smiling and glancing away. He takes a swig and sits up. "Thank you."

"You're crazy," you remind him, and he nods, "But good. If you'd asked me a year ago if I thought forged mechs could be good I woulda told you I'd never met a forged mech I thought had half a spark."

He tilts his head at you, optics dim behind his visor, innocently curious. He is strange, has always been. Too empathetic for his own good, too generous for his own good. "And now?"

"And now I'd say Megatron was right," you sigh, flicking off your visor and leaning back against a half-built wall, "It's all circumstance. I've met too many asshole CC bots to cut it black and white anymore." You thumb over the lip of the engex bottle and take a thoughtful drink. "I don't get you, though. You've got everything. The alt-mode, the job, the life, all the nepotism you could ever ask for- and you're still willing to risk it every day to sneak down into the sewers with folk like me to patch up a couple empties. What are you looking for? What do you think you're going to get?" You online your visor and look at him, looking at you.

Hazard regards you for a moment, his trademark smile falling neutral as he considers you question with uncharacteristic seriousness. He takes a sip and sets the empty bottle back in his lap. 

"Alright," he sighs, "You caught me. I do have some selfish motivation after all."

"Oh, yeah?"

"I had to switch mentors pretty early," he tells you, "My first one was named Autoclave. I didn't know him too well, but he seemed nice enough to me. He died in an accident, and- I mean, again, I didn't really know him well enough yet to be _too_ upset." He pauses and glances away. "After he died, though, people started talking about him. They had a lot of things to say. No one really liked him. He was mean, crass, didn't like sharing or talking. As far as I can tell, he didn't have any friends, and no one had a good thing to say about him." He tightens his hands grip on the bottle. "I want people to remember me better than that. I want to be a hero. I want people to say after I'm gone that I did something that mattered, that Cybertron was different because I lived on it." 

He heaves a heavy sigh, tightening his shoulders, and you shift uncomfortably, wondering if you should reach out and touch him. You don't. 

"I know that's stupid," he murmurs, "I know it's selfish, pompous. Martyr complex or whatever. But I've seen too many people die and just be nameless. Nobodies, as far as Cybertron as a whole seems to be concerned. That's terrifying, to me." 

"I'll remember you," you say, without even thinking, and he looks back up at you. You finally reach out and set a palm on his shoulder. "You know. If you do manage to get yourself killed. Half of Kaon will remember you. So, I mean. I guess if that was your goal you've done a pretty good job." 

He smiles weakly at you, and you feel like you should say something else, but you don't know what else to say. You aren't good at things like this. Instead you pick up your bottle, not yet drained, and offer it to him. He looks down at it and huffs a laugh before he accepts.

The two of you spend another hour watching Kaon go on without you before you fly him back down.

* * *

"Come on, you've got this," Hazard says, encouraging as always. You don't know if you've got this at all, but you'll be damned if you admit that.

As carefully as you possibly can, you set the dial into its housing within your patient's chest, too close to their spark chamber for comfort. Your fingers tremble slightly, making it all the harder, but you're getting better.

"Perfect!" he tells you, "Now what?" 

"Uh," you say, wracking your processor, "The filter tubing needs to be welded on."

"Yes!" he smiles, "Well, actually, you want to spin on this connector piece, and then attach the filter to that, but you know the step."

"Hrrmph," you huff, "Don't patronize me. I got it wrong."

"No, you got it right!" Hazard assures you, passing you the connector, "You just needed a little reminder. You're getting really good at this."

"Sure."

"You are!" he asserts stubbornly, "Trust me. Soon enough, you won't even need my help." 

"Yeah, I have my doubts about that," you laugh, "So don't go anywhere soon, huh?"

"I'm not, I'm not," he scoffs, "Come on, grab the spot welder. You're almost done."

"I'm almost done," you murmur, focusing on your work.

* * *

[Airshock]

You get the message while you're twiddling your thumbs in your habsuite. You haven't been outside in days- Hazard gets away when he can, but he hasn't been down in over a week and you've been starting to worry. Its been getting more and more dangerous out there, the clampdown becoming more and more difficult to avoid. 

[You're alright!] You message back immediately, [I was worried!]

[Sorry to have worried you. Are you busy?]

You hesitate. [Are you alright? Are we working today?]

[No. We aren't working today.]

[What do you need?] you ask, sitting up, rotors jittering anxiously. There's a long pause before he answers.

[A friend, I guess.]

Your spark flutters. [I'll be right there.]

* * *

You don't know what to say. Your hands are in clenched fists and your spark feels coiled into a knot. You don't have words for this. Neither does he. You stand in silence in the dark little room you call a clinic. 

His single optic stares at the floor and never at you. You stand a turbofox length apart but it may as well be a chasm, an ocean, the distance between galaxies. 

"Hazard," you say, voice hoarse, and you don't say _I told you so_ because you know he knows, because you wish you hadn't, because you wish you'd been wrong, and he tries and fails to hide his claws behind his back, shame radiating through his field like wildfire. "I'm sorry."


	4. You weren't the first or the last or worst

"Just stay calm. You can do this."

"I can't!" you cry, your ventilations becoming ragged as panic starts to set into your lines. The patient is bleeding out. You don't have the skill for this, the practice, they're going to die because you aren't good enough at this.

"Yes, you _can,_ " Hazard repeats, with such firm conviction your mouth snaps shut. He's hovering over your work, watching your hands shake through his single optic.

He reaches around you from behind, confident like he shouldn't be, claws on your wrists as he guides your hands through the work. He's focused, still, unflappable, even as your frame rattles against him. "Keep going. Don't stop. You have to get it out now."

"I have to get it out now," you repeat, a lump in your throat. 

"You can do this," he repeats, "Because I can't."

"I can do this," you repeat, prying the fuel tank you damaged out, "I can do this."

* * *

He's different when he isn't working.

You're not an educated mech. You don't know much, but you think maybe something about working the clinic helps Hazard stay grounded, when he's lost everything else. When he isn't teaching you how to pull out someone's fuel tank, though, he just lays in the corner on your berth in recharge and in silence. You've been sleeping on the couch. You don't know what to say to him. 

He's been labelled an empty. That's an even lower class than _you._ You expected they would do something to him if they found out what he was doing, but empurata? On a _forged_ mech? You hadn't expected that. They've been doing it a lot lately, though. You've been seeing more claws than you ever used to these days.

"I'll be back soon," you say. He doesn't respond. "Hazard. I said I'll be back soon."

"Okay," he answers, finally. You linger by the doorway, but you don't know what to say, so you don't say anything. You lock it behind you and leave your habblock, down a maze of ladders into the undercity. 

Swindle's waiting for you outside of your clinic by the time you get there. 

"You're late," he comments.

"You're early," you reply.

He nods at the two boys he brought with him when you get the door open and the four of you vanish inside, locking the door behind you before you turn on the lights. 

You've lost three patients this week. It's been a bad week. It's obvious to everyone you're no Hazard, but you're still better than nothing, so they come anyway. 

"So what have you got?" Swindle asks, nodding at the three boxes stacked against the wall and the corpses he knows lie within. 

"Pump failure, engine seize, cosmic rust," you list off. He perks up at that.

"Hey, now," he asserts, "I'm not paying for rusted parts."

"I cut out all the infection already," you tell him, "You're missing a cranium and an intake. Its got a perfect t-cog and untouched spark chamber."

Swindle eyes you with suspicion and then nods at his lackeys to open the caskets and check. His optics scan what he finds and he turns back to you as they repack everything.

"Two-hundred," he offers.

"Four."

"Outrageous," he says flatly, "Two fifty."

"Four," you repeat. Swindle leans back on the table and runs a hand over his helm.

"We could just take them, you know," he reminds you.

"You could," you nod, "But then you wouldn't get any more. I can't imagine gladiator corpses are particularly rife with unbroken organs. You need me."

Swindle regards you for a moment in silence before he laughs. "I like you," he says with a smirk, "Alright. Three."

"Deal." 

His partners heft up their spoils and Swindle counts out the shanix for you and you hide it behind your spark chamber. Before he leaves he turns back in the doorway.

"You know," he says, "If you ever want a real job, Clench is always hiring medics."

"I'm not a Decepticon," you tell him.

"Don't have to be," he shrugs amiably, "A job is a job."

"Tell Megatron I said good luck on his next match," you say, turning away, "I'll call you when I have more."

"Suit yourself," Swindle shrugs, and leaves. The door shuts behind him, leaving you in silence in the little room. Your tanks roil, but they're too empty to purge.

You pick up energon for two on the way home and Hazard doesn't ask where you got the money when you give it to him. You wonder if he knows, if he thinks he knows, if he wants to know. You hope he doesn't ask, because you can't lie to him.

He doesn't ask.

* * *

"Hazard," you say gently, "It's time to go."

"Go where?" he mumbles. His new vocalizer sounds strange, uncomfortably flat. It doesn't emote right, doesn't sound like him.

"Work," you remind him. He twitches, sits up.

"Right," he murmurs. You step back and away while he stands, and you wonder if he's going to get better, or if this is it now.

You hold his claws in your hand as you lead the way there, because I'd you don't, he drags his pedes and stumbles along in a slow daze. The feel of them makes your plating crawl, but you don't let it show. 

You think it's going to be a normal day through your first three patients, but before you can go and retrieve the fourth from the waiting place, there's a knock at the door.

That's really not supposed to happen. You blindfold people when you move them back here. Not many people know exactly where you are. A knock is not a good sign.

"Who knows we're here?" Hazard whispers to you, spitting static through his low end vocalizer. 

"No one," you lie. Would Swindle come here during the day? 

"Enforcers?" he asks. His voxbox doesn't do emotions well, but you can hear the fear in the question anyway. You set your dentae and draw a pistol from your subspace and check the clip.

"Is that a _gun?_ " Hazard gasps.

"Of course it's a gun," you hiss. The stranger knocks again, more urgently.

"When did you get a gun?!" he frets.

"As soon as you hired me," you answer honestly. You snap it shut and cock it, pointing it at the door. "Who is it?!" you yell. 

The door slams open with a kick from a mech more designed for combat than you'll ever be and you stumble back, into Hazard, too startled to remember to shoot.

You don't know the mech who's broken in, but you can see he's alone, and he's not an enforcer. He's grey and black and yellow, a dour grimace on his faceplate and narrowed red optics. He's got a blaster in one hand and thick, boxy limbs that you know could rip you in half. Your spark skips a beat and you wonder if this is it. 

"Is Ratchet here?" the stranger asks in a gruff, commanding voice. You stare at him over the barrel of your pointed weapon, something he doesn't even seem to acknowledge. 

"Ratchet?" you ask, confused, "The Autobot CMO? No. What? No. Why would he be here?"

The stranger frowns harder. "Great. Thanks for the intel, Swindle," he mumbles under his breath. "Sorry about the door." He turns to leave, just like that.

"You're Deadlock!" Hazard cries behind you, like an idiot.

Deadlock freezes and swivels around, red optics locking onto him behind you, like he only just realized he was even there. "Excuse you?"

Hazard pushes out from behind you, even though you try to stop him. "You are! You're _conclave-_ you're a Decepticon!" 

"Strange to point it out if you know what that means," Deadlock comments, an edge of threat in his voice that you really don't like. 

"Take me with you!" Hazard asserts, his voice firm and passionate again like it hasn't been since the empurata, his real medic voice again, "I want to join." 

Deadlock scrunches up his face. "You?" he asks, baffled, "You're a real medic, aren't you?"

" _Hazard-_ " you hiss, but he ignores you.

"Look at me!" he cries, pointing at his face, or lack thereof, "Do I look like I'm still a medic? I've read _Towards Peace._ I want to join."

Deadlock eyes him a moment before before he snorts a laugh. "Yeah, alright then. Come on, we could use you." 

Hazard lights up, spinal strut straightening as he stands and offers you a claw. "Come on!"

You stare at him blankly. 

"Airshock," he says, "Come on."

"I want to help people," you say, "I don't want to join a war."

"Are you coming?" Deadlock asks, sounding annoyed. Hazard looks up at him and then back at you.

"Airshock…" he repeats, claw still held out toward you.

You shake you head. "I- I can't." 

He doesn't have a face. He can't have an expression. Somehow, though, you can see the sadness on him. His claws fold inward and fall back to his side.

"I understand," Hazard tells you, and you wonder if he does. He turns away from you, and follows Deadlock out of the room.

They leave you.


End file.
